Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Garnier and Earl Attlee

Committee stage
Thursday 15th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I want to speak briefly to the amendment that my noble friend Lord Attlee spent about 15 seconds talking about; that is, his Amendment 414. At the outset of his remarks, I was worried that he might be positively going to support his own amendment, but he very quickly said that he hoped that the Minister would not accept it, and so do I.

If one looks at the draft of Amendment 414, one sees that it is designed to allow chief officers of police to set and vary any fee payable for shotguns and firearms. It is not quite clear from the draft of the proposed new clause whether this would, if enacted, cover just England and Wales, or whether it would cover England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. If the latter, that would be 45 separate chief officers of police who may well decide to set separate fees for each of the 45 police territorial areas; if it is only England and Wales, there would be 43, and that is bad enough.

I declare an interest as a holder of a shotgun certificate. While I admire, in every possible way, the chief constable of my own police area, I do not wish him to have the ability to set the level of the firearm certificate fee. It is a tax, and if it is not a tax, it is a fee that should be set by one person who is accountable to Parliament; namely, the Secretary of State. I think I need to say no more, not least because my noble friend Lord Attlee encouraged me greatly by saying precisely very little about the amendment himself.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, the only purpose of Amendment 414 is to stop the Minister saying it is an operational matter for the police. If police charges for abnormal load escorts are operational matters for the police, surely firearms licensing charges are. We have been screwing down the cost of a firearms certificate, which means that police forces are not able to do as good a job as they would like. The cost of a firearms certificate is less than the cost of the visit to the dentist.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Garnier and Earl Attlee

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Faulks. While I entirely understand the motivation behind the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I am not entirely sure that it is necessary. As the noble Lord said, there is no limitation for the bringing of this particular Section 9 offence.

I do not wish to get into my anecdotage, but I remember that, as a law officer, one very often had to deal with historic offences whereby a mature person, in their 50s, 60s or 70s, was being indicted or prosecuted for an offence they committed many years ago against a minor. Had the problem existed that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, envisages through her amendment, that would have been a matter we would have had to consider. As the Minister will no doubt tell us from her experience as someone who worked at a senior level in the Crown Prosecution Service, you have to consider whether there is an adequacy of evidence and whether it is in the public interest to bring that person to trial. The age of the offence might be considered by the prosecutor, but there is no time bar, as I understand it. While I may well be corrected for being out of date and ignorant, I certainly do not think that there is a need for this amendment, although it is well motivated.

I have a suspicion that I have got this entirely wrong and that the Minister is going to tell me that it would have been better if I had kept to my place, but there we are. There are plenty of things that we could do with the Bill—make it shorter, for example—but I am not sure that this amendment is one that we need to add to it.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in strong support of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I do not know whether it is necessary. I declare an interest as a victim. My concern about the historic sex offences is the prison population. We have large numbers of historic sex offenders in prison. It creates great problems for the Prison Service. However, a custodial sentence is the only sensible disposal. We need to work out what to do with historic sex offenders within the prison system.